KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities on Thursday accused deposed President Viktor Yanukovych of conspiring with security officials in February to carry out an unlawful anti-terrorist operation that resulted in elite riot police under their command shooting and killing several anti-government protesters in central Kiev in February.

They also said Yanukovych had used kidnappers and gangs of “titushki” — hired thugs — to intimidate the protesters and quell mass rallies held in the city’s Independence Square since last November, when Yanukovych spurned a long-anticipated association deal with the European Union, setting the events in motion.

Ukraine’s interior minister, security service chief and general prosecutor presented the findings at a joint press conference in Kiev on Thursday. Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky said 12 members of the riot police units, who are believed to have shot and killed protesters, had been detained. That includes their leader, who allegedly handed out high-powered weapons, such as sniper and Kalashnikov rifles, for use against the protesters.

But Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said others under investigation had fled to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula seized and annexed by Russia in March. Seventeen protesters were killed by employees of the special police forces operating at Institutska Street, according to Avakov. Eight people were killed from the same machine gun, he added.

“The former government of the country gave criminal orders and a huge number of people suffered in this meat mincer,” Avakov said.

Security Service of Ukraine Chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said Yanukovych is to blame for the killings of more than 100 people, hailed as heroes and dubbed “The Heavenly Hundred” by protesters.

In this file photo taken on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014, bodies of anti-government protesters killed in clashes with police lay at the Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine.

Image: Marko Drobnjakovic, File/Associated Press

“The planned anti-terrorist operation, and in fact the organization of mass killings of people, was directly led by former President Yanukovych,” he said.

Nalyvaichenko also said 26 members of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) participated in planning and implementing the anti-terrorist operation and had been at the premises of the Security Service of Ukraine ahead of the operation, but came up short in showing evidence to support the claims.

“We have reasonable grounds to believe that these groups, who were on one of the SBU firing grounds, participated in planning and implementing measures on the so-called anti-terrorist operation,” he said at the joint briefing on Thursday.

Russia’s FSB, however, said it had not been involved in anti-terrorism operation, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. “Let those statements remain on the conscience of the Ukrainian Security Services,” the news agency cited the security agency as saying.

Dozens of the protesters were shot in the head, heart and lungs, clear signs that they were targeted by expert marksmen, Dr. Olha Bohomolets, who treated several gunshot victims at the nearby Hotel Ukraine on Feb. 20, told Mashable at the time.

The video below, which Ukraine's Interior Ministry released on Thursday, was filmed on Feb. 20. It shows the special police units firing at protesters.

The killings led to the downfall of Yanukovych, who hastily fled his palatial estate outside Kiev under the cover of darkness late on Feb. 21, popping up later in Russia’s southern Rostov-on-Don. He has been charged and is wanted for mass murder in connection with the protester deaths.

In an interview there with the Associated Press and the Russian state television channel NTV on Thursday, Yanukovych said he had “never given any kinds of order for any shooting.”

Since the Feb. 20 shootings, the rumor mill has been flush with ideas as to who opened fire at protesters on Institutska Street that morning. They run the gamut, from opposition-backed nationalist gunners with American support, to assassins hired by Yanukovych’s eldest son, Oleksandr.

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